• Mark Appel likely lost out on at least $2 million by the Astros and Twins passing on him in favor of Carlos Correa and Byron Buxton, and there isn't much Scott Boras can do about it.

• I know absolutely nothing about hockey, but Ben Goessling's detailed timeline of how the Wild snagged Zach Parise and Ryan Suter was still a very interesting read.

• I subscribe to 50 podcasts at this point, but two that have recently moved to the front of the line are Stop Podcasting Yourself with Graham Clark and Dave Shumka and Throwing Shade with Erin Gibson and Bryan Safi. I listen to both immediately when they come out each week.

• This might be the closest I'll ever come to having something I wrote in an actual newspaper, so my mom was pretty excited.

Get the 22nd edition of the New York Times bestselling Baseball Prospectus Annual. Edited by Aaron Gleeman, it features a foreword from Twins pitcher Glen Perkins, a Twins team chapter written by Gleeman and Parker Hageman, and 600 pages of analysis, projections, essays, rankings, and in-depth coverage of all 30 teams.